*II*
Melchester was profoundly interested in the new premises, and the other
dealers in genuine antiques went about, so Quinney affirmed, chattering
with rage, and predicting ruin.
"They'll be ruined," said Quinney, chuckling and rubbing his hands.
"Nobody will buy their muck, and they know it."
He had very nice hands, with long slender fingers, manifestly fashioned
to pick up egg-shell china. Also in spite of his accent, which time
might reasonably be expected to improve, his voice held persuasive
inflections, and the resonant _timbre_ of the enthusiast, likely to ring
in the memories of too timid customers, the collectors who stare at
bargains twice a day till they are snapped up by somebody else. Quinney
despised these Laodiceans in his heart, but he told Susan that they did
well enough to practise upon.
"You want to get the patter," he told his wife, "and the best and
quickest way is to turn loose on the _think it overs_. See?"
It had long been arranged between them that Susan was to help in the
shop and acquire at first hand intimate knowledge of a complex business.
Quinney summed up the art of selling stuff in a few pregnant words.
"Find out what they want, and don't be too keen to sell to 'em. Most
men, my pretty, and nearly all the women go dotty over the things
hardest to get. Our best stuff will sell itself, if we go slow. Old
silver is getting scarcer every day."
Susan smiled at her Joe's words of wisdom. He continued fluently:
"We've a lot to learn; something new every hour. And we shall make
bloomin' errors, again and again. All dealers do. Tomlin was had to
rights only last week over two Chippendale chairs; and he thinks he
knows all about 'em. I've been done proper over that coffee-pot."
He showed her a massive silver coffee-pot with finely defined marks upon
it.
"A genuine George II bit, Susie, and worth its weight in gold if it
hadn't been tampered with by some fool later on. All that repousse work
is George IV, and I never knew it. The worst fake is the half-genuine
ones."
"Gracious!" exclaimed his pupil.
"There are lots o' things I don't know, and don't understand, my girl;
all the more reason to hold tight on to what I do know. And what I know
I'll try to share with you, and what you know you'll try to share with
me."
"I'm stupid about things," said Susan.
Quinney strolled across the room, and selected two jars more or less
alike in shape and paste and colour.
"Can you tell t'other from which?" he asked. "Look at 'em, feel 'em
inside and out."
Susan obeyed, but after a minute she shook her head.
"Ain't they just alike, Joe?"
"Lord, no! One's the real old blue and white, hand-painted, and worth
fifty pound. T'other is a reproduction, printed stuff, with a different
glaze. Look again, my pretty!"
"This is the old one, Joe."
"No, it ain't. Slip your hand inside. Which is the smoother and better
finished inside?"
"Yes, I feel the difference, but I don't see it. I wish I could see
it."
"You will. I'm going to put a little chipped bit of the best on your
toilet table. You just squint at it twenty times a day for one year,
and you'll know something. That's what I'm doing with the earlier
stuff, which is more difficult to be sure of, because it doesn't look so
good. I wouldn't trust my judgment to buy it. That's Tomlin's job."
Susan frowned.
"I don't like Mr. Tomlin, Joe."
"Never asked you to like him, but we can learn a lot from Tomlin. See?
He's an expert upon Chinese and Japanese porcelain and lac. We've got
to suck his brains."
"Ugh!" said Susan.
During these first few weeks she displayed great aptitude as a
saleswoman. Her face, so ingenuous in its expression, her soft voice,
her pretty figure attracted customers. The price of every article in
the shop was marked in letters which she could turn into figures. But
this price was a "fancy one," what Quinney termed a "top-notcher."
Susan was instructed to take a third less. Quinney trained her to
answer awkward questions, to make a pretty picture of ignorance, to pose
effectively as the inexperienced wife keeping the shop during the
absence of her husband. He had said upon the morning of the grand
opening of _Quinneys'_, "I don't want you to tell lies, Sue."
"I wouldn't for the world," she replied.
He pinched her chin, chuckling derisively. "I know you wouldn't; but I
don't want you to tell all the truth neither."
"What do you mean?"
"This oak now. Me and you know it's new, but if a customer tells you
it's old, don't contradict him. 'Twouldn't be polite. All you know
about it is this--your clever hubby picked it up in France, in Brittany.
See?"